Mario Bautista & Marcus McGhee Steal the Show

This was Magomed Ankalaev’s chance to reset the order of things and correct a rather embarassing mark on his record. Ankalaev came out and, thankfully, at last, he began checking Johnny Walker’s kicks. In the very first exchange of the match, Ankalaev raised his lead leg for a cross check and swatted Walker with long right hook that had Walker clutching his face.

This was the crux of Walker’s trouble in the match: he can leap, he can spin, he can kick like a mule, but it is as though no coach at any point asked him “what will you do if something comes back?” When he kicks his kicking-side arm is neither thrown back to counterbalance nor extended high to frame, it just sort of dangles there. His sole concession to defence is to spin through into a backfist or elbow or wheel kick when he misses.

Fig. 1

The finish came after Walker began to slow down and his antics became easier to read. A low kick sailed under Ankalaev’s foot as he raised his leg to check and suddenly Walker had crossed himself up. Too close in to spin, Walker tried to duck out backwards as Ankalaev threw a thunderous right hand from outside foot position and with Walker tripping over his own feet.

Fig. 2

But even with Ankalaev and Walker’s faces on the poster, the stars of the card were undoubtedly the pair of bantamweights from Arizona’s MMA Lab. Marcus McGhee beat the brakes off Gaston Bolanos on the undercard, while Mario Bautista finally achieved recognition as a ranked fighter in MMA’s most cutthroat division with a convincing victory over Ricky Simon. Let us begin with McGhee’s brilliant display of MMA boxing.

McGhee clearly has speed and power but the intangible that makes him look so good is his anticipation. He can read when an opponent is ready to throw a counter and when they are going to sit on their hands. When they are looking to counter, he feeds them just enough of a lead to draw them out and onto his own counter: the old “first and third” principle. When they aren’t falling for that, he pushes his advantages with flurries and combinations. An example of leading to draw would be his use of the jab and the shoulder feint to draw Bolanos forward onto a short right hook as he did at the start of round two.

McGhee’s southpaw right hook was a revelation. In the open stance engagements of boxing the tight lead hook is a deadly and rarely sighted creature, but in the longer-range matches of sports that involve kicking, it is almost cryptozoological.  Though some credit must be given to Bolanos, whose constant leading with his head allowed McGhee to draw him forwards onto hooks with ease.

Figure 3 shows a typical Bolanos lead. Notice how far his head moves in front of his hips. At this point the fighter either has to shift and break his stance out of necessity, or brake himself with his lead leg so severely that it kills all of his momentum. Good combination hitting off this sort of lean is almost impossible.

Fig. 3

Figure 4 shows how Bolanos was kind enough to do this sort of lunging from both stances.

Fig. 4

In fact this constant leading with the face was largely responsible for the major knockdown that decided the fight. Figure 5 begins with McGhee throwing up a left high kick and then drawing his leg behind him to put him back in his southpaw stance. Notice that as Bolanos pursues McGhee out of the kick in order to “get one back”, his face is committed to the attack long before his hands have even begun to threaten McGhee.

Fig. 5

But not all of McGhee’s successes were down to Bolanos’ defensive failings. In the first round McGhee showed some beautiful herding along the fence. Pumping out a non-committal jab to get Bolanos circling (b) McGhee doubled up off his right to score a gut munching short uppercut to the solar plexus that stopped Bolanos in his tracks and allowed McGhee to rattle off further combination work.

Fig. 6

One interesting aspect of McGhee’s right hook that you might have noticed in Figure 3 above is his penchant for back stepping while he throws it. This is the reverse of the classical side step—where you turn to your power side and step straight out with your rear foot so that you are effectively walking forwards, but out the side of the exchange.

Figure 7 shows a clean example of McGhee using his back stepping right hook with his back to the fence. One fun aspect of this backstepping hook is that by leaning forward as he turns to the side, McGhee can slip to the inside of his opponent’s body, while moving his feet to circle out the side door.

Fig. 7

While Figure 7 was a successful connection, Figure 8 shows that as a tool of defensive ringcraft this side stepping hook does not need to land well to be useful. As Bolanos enters behind a left straight, McGhee throws his right hook and it winds up crossing over the top. The connection is not a particularly damaging one, but McGhee can combine a push behind Bolanos arm with his pivot and break away to the centre of the cage.

Fig. 8

Knee strikes were a theme on Saturday night. Felipe Bunes was able to use them as Josh Van walked him down to prevent Van from level changing or slipping effectively, and this resulted in Van eating a number of good straight punches and front kicks to the body through the first round.

The knee and the uppercut are very similar in their application against an opponent who intends to move his head. Whether it’s a level change onto the hips or a slip to set up counter offence, both will get you hurt if you throw yourself onto a knee strike while you’re attempting them. So the uppercut or knee can be a knockout connection or they can force the opponent to fight differently and remove one layer of his defence.

Bruno Ferreira versus Phil Hawes summed this up in two perfect moments. Hawes discovered that he can throw a punch and move his head at the same time and that has become his sole means of boxing. If you watched his fight with Ikram Aliskerov you will recall that he found great success with a dipping southpaw right hook… right up until Aliskerov shot a right straight to where Hawes’ head was slipping to in 100% of exchanges. But Hawes is still doing it: every time Ferreira attacked him, Hawes poked out a jab and ducked down to look at the floor.

Ferreira caught him doing this and nailed Hawes with a knee that rattled his infamous chin.

Fig. 9

Moments later, as Hawes was fighting for his life, Ferreira pitched another knee. But this time Hawes didn’t duck over as soon as he saw Ferreira stepping in to exchange: he stayed bolt upright, accutely aware of what happened last time. But ducking is Hawes’ main line of defence, so when Ferreira pitched a left straight immediately afterwards, Hawes was caught cold and fell to the mat for another crushing knockout loss.

Fig. 10

This brings us on to Simon versus Bautista. The former is a wrestler who loves to level change mid exchange. The latter is a striker who adores jumping knees. Simon’s defensive habits played right into Bautista’s offensive ones and it looked like a recipe for disaster. The fight started and the knees came in thick and fast, and to the surprise of this writer, Simon handled the knees masterfully.

The first attempt came as Bautista cornered Simon against the cage. Simon almost always ducks onto the hips when he gets stuck against the cage. Bautista leapt through the air to try and cave in Simon’s face as the wrestler ducked and instead Simon stayed upright, scored a left hook, and pivoted out as Bautista fell clumsily to the floor.

Fig. 11

Generally it was Simon’s posture that saved him from the knee. Figure 12 shows Bautista using a stepping knee and Simon pivoting around behind his left shoulder, getting behind the leg in order to chase the takedown.

Fig. 12

On one occasion, Simon did level change as Bautista attempted a knee, but he had clocked Bautista’s intentions. Bautista threw an obvious right straight and step up, with the intention of stepping through into the left knee. Simon level changed and hit Bautista’s legs as they came together, before the knee was even pointing at him.

Fig. 13

Later in the first round, Simon scored the left hook counter once again and hurt Bautista, who announced to his corner that he was abandoning the knee.

Fig. 14

With all of that praise for Simon’s anti-knee work you might think the knee was a failure. But with the exception of the one counter takedown, Simon stayed upright when Bautista entered. His constant level changes became occasional level changes. He was being forced to fight in a different way and this, in turn, opened him up to the straight punching and southpaw body kicking that Bautista leaned on through the rest of the fight.

Bautista consistently looked to hit Simon on his inside slip. Any straight punch thrown at Simon sees him slip to his left and throw the overhand right. Figure 15 shows Bautista finding him by slipping under the overhand and shooting a straight to Simon’s slip.

Fig. 15

While Figure 16 shows Bautista winging in an elbow to catch Simon slipping to the same position.

Fig. 16

Of special note was Bautista’s grappling. He was not able to keep his back off the mat altogether, but showed a great mix of urgency and composure when he found himself on the bottom. The most important technique in the grappling portions of the fight was the simple elbow pass from a front headlock.

Figure 17 shows Bautista escaping the bottom of side control. He digs the underhook (a), turns into Simon (b), and Simon transitions to the front headlock (c). Bautista builds up to his hands to create some height (d).

Fig. 17

Figure 18 continues the sequence. Bautista transfers to just his right hand on the mat. He holds Simon’s right elbow with his left hand, and steps up onto his left foot (e). Driving off his left foot, turning his head across Simon’s chest, and pushing Simons’ right elbow across his body, he is able to perform a perfect elbow pass (f). He combines swinging a right uppercut with jumping up to his feet (g), (h).

Fig. 18

By my count, Bautista hit five of these elbow passes in key exchanges in the fight. Forcing your way up on a single leg is hard work, but encouraging the opponent to transition to the front headlock and escaping from there had a one hundred percent success rate for Bautista.

Finally, the guard recovery which Bautista used in round three is well worth studying.

Bautista is stuck in a flattened half guard, Simon has the underhook and cross face (a). Bautista keeps his left hand against Simon’s hip and swings his legs to his right, getting onto his right side (b). Most half guard play is shrimping the hips out in the opposite direction, but this hip movement can be used to enter a deep half guard from a flattened position. Bautista scissors his legs in front of Simon’s thigh momentarily as Simon floats in a tripod above him (c). Eventually Bautista turns his left knee upward and slips it free to create a butterfly hook (d). Simon’s weight comes back down as Bautista inserts his other butterfly hook (e). Bautista used this sequence to create a scramble that saw him get front headlocked and elbow pass out of it once again.

Fig. 19

I expected Bautista and Simon to be the best fight on the card by a good margin, but even with those high expectations it did not disappoint.